Dish, T-Mobile Near Merger At Last?

According to the Wall Street Journal this morning, Dish and its CEO Charlie Ergen may finally achieve the wireless dream they have been chasing for many years now. While it's not exactly news that the two might be interested in a combination, Dish and T-Mobile are said to be hammering out an actual deal.

Aside from minor details like the purchase price, the combination would see Ergen take the chairman position with John Legere keeping the reins as CEO of the Uncarrier. Dish would bring its spectrum holdings to the table, supplementing T-Mobile's hungry network, and presumably Deutsche Telekom would finally escape from the USA at long last with a fatter wallet than most would have expected a few years ago.

DT has tried to sell T-Mobile to AT&T and to Sprint, but regulators didn't like either idea. Dish, however, would probably face few if any regulatory hurdles, as the number of major mobile companies would remain at 4.

So what stands in the way of a deal? The price tag seems like the only hurdle, this one has always made sense to me.